The present invention relates to an improved card feeding means and more particularly to an offset feeder mechanism for feeding the lowermost card from a stack of record cards to an offset position and which employs a constantly driven high-friction feed roller mounted for movement into and out of engagement with the lowermost record card by means of a solenoid and linkage arrangement.
A requirement that has to be met in this type of record card movement is to insure that the offset card remains stationary while the feed mechanism retracts for movement to its home position so that the card is in position for a further feed movement. Prior feeding devices of this type have utilized a second feed and pressure roller combination to engage the record card after it has been removed from the stack of supporting the card while the first feed roller is removed from the card. Examples of this type of card feed apparatus may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,642,271 and 3,693,967. It has been found that this type of construction has required costly and complex drive trains together with critical alignment requirements between the feed rollers which require frequent adjustments.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel card feed apparatus which selects and feeds a single record card from a stack of cards to an offset position and holds the cards in such offset position while the feed apparatus returns to its home position. It is a further object of this invention to provide a card feed apparatus which utilizes a single feed roller for feeding a record card from a stack of cards to an offset position with the feed roller holding the card in such offset position while the feed roller returns to its home position. It is another object of this invention to provide a card feed apparatus which will function in the manner set out above which is simple in construction and therefore low in cost. Other objects and advantages, as well as the exact nature of the invention, will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the consideration of the following disclosure of the invention.